Bienvenidos a Tijuana! La parte dos

I actually just found this out. Just over a week ago, I was at this hospital, apparently, and I was not even aware of what had happened there not so long ago.



This is a video from Hospital General de Tijuana. A little over a year ago, drug cartels stormed the building and controlled it until the Mexican Army arrived.

I know one of these is in my last post, but here are the photos I took. There were a lot of people there, but luckily everything was calm.



Security was extremely tight. The police and security guards on duty were being very careful over who was to be let in. I decided a view from outside was all I needed.



Not even hospitals are safe in Mexico anymore.

Bienvenidos a Tijuana! La parte uno...

For the past several months, I have been hearing a lot about the situation in Northern Mexico, especially on conservative talk radio and other similar media sources. I have heard border cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez described as "shooting galleries" and I have read a lot about them in the international media. Well I decided I needed to see this for myself, so I bought a plane ticket and flew down to San Diego. From there, I took the trolley into Tijuana. I felt a rush of adrenaline just seeing the city from the trolley window, before I even reached the San Ysidro border crossing. A giant Mexican flag flew beside the Tijuana arch, which I found to be a spectacular sight.



I'm not quite sure of the dimensions of this flag, but it must be very large. As soon as I stepped across the border, I found a large convoy of yellow taxis all waiting to bring the American tourists to the most popular parts of Tijuana. My driver was surprised when I told him what destination I was hoping to reach: the Tijuana police headquarters.



Once the cab got in motion it didn't take long to realize I was truly in a foreign country. The traffic was madness...cars swirling through roundabouts, aging buses blowing out black smoke, and pedestrians walking into oncoming traffic. It was a "every man for himself" mentality on the streets of downtown Tijuana, at least that's the way it seemed to me. Being from a quiet town outside of San Francisco, maybe I don't know what I am talking about.



Upon reaching the police station, I asked the driver if he would accept dollars since I had only converted half of my money to pesos and I wanted to save it. He did, and I was surprised to learn how many stores in Mexico accept dollars. Anyway, the police station was quite an experience. Armed guards with M-16 Assault rifles slung over their shoulders patrolled the perimeter...it was basically a fortress. I chatted with a police captain for several minutes and was disappointed to learn that my contact I had spoken with over the phone had been called away to Mexico City for the weekend. I did have a few minutes to talk with his spokesman though.

Police vehicles are pretty much the same as their counterparts in the US, although they are printed with "Policia" on the side, so you definitely know you are in Mexico.

Tijuana has also introduced a new fleet of police vehicles that are smaller, flashier, and more fuel efficient. There was also a lot of motorbike cops on the streets. I was surprised by the number of female police officers, one of whom was driving a vehicle.

I asked the captain if he would allow me to take a few photos and he said it would be okay. Taking photos of police and military personal is a very sensitive issue, or so I learned, because after the captain went inside, one of the men holding an M-16 decided I had taken enough photos. Considering the firepower he was packing, I was not in a position to argue. I put my camera away and strolled off to Avenida Revolucion, Tijuana's once bustling tourist zone.



Before I left for Tijuana I learned that Avenida Revolucion had been devoid of tourists as of late because of the spiraling drug cartel violence. I noticed that most of the people I was passing by on the streets were Mexicans. Waiters, bartenders, and club owners rushed out on the streets upon seeing me walking down the street, hoping they might be able to get a few dollars from an American visitor for a beer or a cigar. I ended up buying a couple of Mexican lagers and a Cuban cigar. The man in the cigar shop had hoped I would take it a step further by purchasing a poncho and a Sombrero, but I politely declined. I do regret not asking him to take a photo of me wearing it though.





This is a car dealership across the street from my hotel. Used Jetta sedans are being sold for just under 135,000 Pesos, or around 9,000 dollars. It really makes you appreciate the value of the dollar, despite all of the enonomic news, doesn't it?


Further downtown in the financial district of the city, things were calm, save for the occasional sound of a police siren or the honking of a horn. In this photo, the sun is beginning to set, and common sense was telling me to get back to the hotel because many of Tijuana's most horrific crimes take place at night and in the late evening. I ended up hanging out in a Starbucks for a little while though.



Now this I found to be a strange sight...this is a statue of Abraham Lincoln, also just a few blocks away from my hotel. I've heard a lot about how Latin America is "Anti-US" but I didn't see any of that in Tijuana. I proudly wore a "United States Navy" sweatshirt during my walk through the city and I had many people say to me "Yeah! America". Tijuanans were very friendly.



Outside of the financial district, things got a little more gloomy. This is the type of setting I imagine every time I read a horror story on the news about violence in Tijuana or any of the other northern cities. This was probably the one point in the trip where I feared a shoot-out could suddenly erupt. This picture was taken from a pedestrian overpass above a busy road.



I crossed over the pedestrian bridge and could see one of Tijuana's main hospitals off in the distance. After crossing a drainage canal I got a good view of the hospital, and found that it was very busy.





Once again, here are some more indications you are clearly not in the US when you are in a border city like Tijuana. The Km/hr sign reminded me of Europe. This was taken as I stepped down from the pedestrian bridge.



Tijuana is growing rapidly despite the troubles it is facing. I read somewhere that the city's population is approaching 2 million!

As I began to walk back to the hotel, I passed a government office...I believe it was for a state prosecutor. Granted that this is the type of peron at the center of the drugs war, I was not surprised to see two armored Humvees sitting outside with masked soldiers behind 50 Caliber machine guns. I reached for my camera, anxiously hoping to get a photo. In my best Spanish, I politely approached them.

Hola, yo soy estudiante del periodismo en Estados Unidos. Un Foto?
(Hello, I am a journalism student in the United States. May I take your photo?)

They politely replied:

Arrepentido, eso no es permitido. (sorry, we are not allowed to do so)

and I said:

Permanezca seguro, amigos (stay safe friends)

I would've been quite a sight to get a picture of, but just as I felt with the police, I was not in a position to push it when my subjects have machine guns. I also learned that soldiers and police wear black or brown face masks to conceal their identities, and photos are a concern because the drug cartels could use them to find the families of soldiers and police...something that has been happening all to often along our troubled border with Mexico.

I will have more photos to post soon, along with the conclusion of my trip...standby until then.

Knock-knock

As I recall, the media was quite anxious to talk about the "civil war" in Iraq back in 2005-2007, and the power of the insurgency. What I'm wondering now, is where are they to reveal the truth about the insurgency waging a gruesome battle on the border between the US and Mexico? Mexico is already in a state of war fighting drug cartels that have brought Al-Qaeda style violence to the people trying to go about their lives in its northern cities.

Beheadings, kidnappings, and assassinations are all common place in Northern Mexico today.

Reporting from Mexico City -- The Mexican government will deploy 1,000 more federal police officers as part of a wider effort to restore order in Ciudad Juarez, the nation's most violent city, officials said Monday.

Some of those uniformed federal officers began arriving in the border city Monday, two days after about 2,000 soldiers landed there in a related military buildup. Those soldiers were the first of an expected 5,000 additional troops who will be sent to help perform basic police functions.

The military reinforcements will bring to more than 7,000 the number of soldiers in Ciudad Juarez.

The nation's public safety chief, Genaro Garcia Luna, said that along with the soldiers, he planned to dispatch the additional 1,000 federal police officers, Notimex news agency reported.

About 425 federal officers already had been posted in Ciudad Juarez, where the death toll last year exceeded 1,600, the highest in a country racked by drug-related violence.

The border city is in the throes of a vicious turf war between a local drug-smuggling organization and rivals from the northwestern state of Sinaloa. The feud, and the Mexican government's 2-year-old crackdown on organized crime, has sent killings soaring.

The city's police chief, Roberto Orduna Cruz, resigned almost two weeks ago after several of his officers were shot to death and anonymous signs appeared warning that an officer would be killed every 48 hours unless he stepped down.

Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, who has also been the subject of anonymous handwritten threats, said last week that the army would take over basic policing duties, such as patrolling the streets.

More of this story can be read in the Los Angeles Times here

Side-note: I have filed this post under "War on Terrorism" because the subhuman monsters terrorizing the citizens of Ciudad Juarez are terrorists just as much as Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and other knife-wielding lunatics who bastardize the Koran.

A new bastion for anti-semitism

South America has seen Nazi-like regimes come in place before, and it looks like Hugo Chavez's recent diplomatic moves against Israel are stirring the flames of anti-semitism.

Synagogue attacked in Venezuela

An armed gang has ransacked a Jewish synagogue in the Venezuelan capital Caracas after occupying the building for several hours.

About 15 unidentified men broke into the building before daubing graffiti on the walls and desecrating scriptures.

They also called for Jewish people to be expelled from the country.

Jewish leaders say tensions have risen since Venezuela broke diplomatic relations with Israel this month over its recent military offensive in Gaza.

Elias Farache, president of Venezuela's Jewish Association, said the gang had tied and gagged security guards before destroying offices and the place where holy books were kept.

Anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli slogans were painted on the walls.

"Never in the history of Venezuela's Jewish community have we been the target of such an aggression," said Mr Farache.

"The climate is very tense. We feel threatened, intimidated, attacked."

'Moral force'

Venezuela and Israel have had strained relations for some time, and Caracas has been fiercely critical of Israel's military operations in Gaza, which started in late December.

The Venezuelan ambassador and his staff were ordered to leave the country on 6 January, and President Hugo Chavez has urged Israelis to stand up against their government.

Israel responded by ordering Venezuelan diplomats to leave, declaring them "persona non grata in Israel" earlier this week.

Thank you, Colombia

Americans might be pre-occupied with the economic crisis and don't have much time to focus on the drug smuggling and gang-related activities making their way from Latin America over our borders, but our allies certainly do. Colombia just announced the seizure of 10 tons of Cocaine in a Caribbean port city. Just think of it this way...this is 10 tons of cocaine that won't be making it into our cities and our schools.

If you read the article, you will see that it mentions Venezuela is playing a very negative role in the fight against drug smuggling. Isn't it nice that Hugo Chavez looks the other way when these thugs hide out over the border in his country?

Huge Cocaine Seizure in Colombia

Colombian police have seized a 10-tonne consignment of cocaine with a street value of $200m (£126m) which was reportedly about to be sent to Mexico.

The drugs were found in the Caribbean city of Barranquilla in two trucks where they were camouflaged in boxes filled with children's modelling clay.

The drugs were headed for the city of Veracruz in Mexico.

They allegedly belonged to one of Colombia's top traffickers, Daniel Barrera, nicknamed "The Madman".

The cocaine was seized after a six-month intelligence operation which tracked a drug route up to Barranquilla.

The drugs were moved in two containers travelling on trucks that were to be put on a ship and dispatched to Mexico.

Gen Oscar Naranjo, the chief of Colombia's police force, said that the consignment belonged to "The Madman".

The trafficker is known to move through the eastern plains of Colombia and into Venezuela where he often bases himself out of reach of the Colombian security forces and the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela does not co-operate with the US anti-drug agencies.

Colombian drug lords have taken advantage of this not only to turn Venezuela into one of the principal transit nations for cocaine, but to use it as a refuge, the BBC's Jeremy McDermott reports from Colombia.

Smile, Haiti

Singer Wyclef Jean, who is a Haitian national, is putting together a relief effort for the people of Haiti, where a series of hurricanes have devastated the tiny Caribbean nation. Hundreds have died in one city alone, and the receding floodwaters are bound to reveal even more destruction as the days go by. Wyclef Jean moves me emotionally with his actions to try and make the world a better place.

It makes me think of Bob Marley's "Smile Jamaica" concert, which took place in 1976 and helped redefine the meaning of "one love". In an attempt to stop the civil unrest in Jamaica with the love of reggae music, Marley organized a concert in Kingston only to be wounded just days before the event, when gunmen broke into his residence and also injured his wife, Rita, and a friend. However, it did not stop him from going on stage for a full performance and bringing a smile to the faces of Jamaicans. I've always thought that Marley would be proud of Wyclef Jean and the Fugees' rendition of "No Woman no Cry" and I feel that without a doubt he would be proud of these efforts, too.

Wyclef's song "million voices" about the Rwandan Genocide gives me chills every time I listen to it.

The realities of immigration

This is a documentary I found on youtube about illegal immigration. The question we should all be asking ourselves is why these immigrants want to flee their homeland in the first place, not simply "how do we get rid of them" as many conservative commentators and right-wing activists tend to say. The immigrants in this video seem like perfectly ordinary people who are truly looking for a better life and better place to live. At the same time, many people here in this country are probably wondering how conditions in Mexico can be so bad that millions of people are fleeing over the border.

Obviously, Mexicans are faced with a number of problems, from poverty to drug cartels terrorizing the population in the country's north. It may very well be that the solution to solving this problem will be the actions taken by the Mexican government to solve the drug trade issues and the fierce violence that claimed the lives of thousands of people last year alone, as opposed to any of the solutions being passed around in Congress or in any of the talking points given by Lou Dobbs or Pat Buchanan.

The extreme right (like those mentioned above) seem to think that building a wall across the border and sealing ourselves off will somehow solve this issue. Personally, I would like to see that wall torn down because it alienates this country from the Mexican community and basically sends the message that we do not want to associate with them. To make life better for people on both sides of the border we should be doing the exact opposite--the USA and Mexico should come up with a comprehensive plan to work together in helping the people of Mexico live better lives, instead of having to pack up and flee through scorching deserts and terrain run by drug cartels who have adopted Al-Qaeda inspired tactics.

One way or another, building a wall is not the answer, but developing a closer relationship and working together with those on the other side of the border just might be.

Castro's half-century reign comes to an end as Cuba faces an uncertain future

The picture on the left shows Cuban dictator Fidel Castro when he first came to power in 1959, some 49 years ago. Today, Castro has announced he is "stepping down" as president. His brother, Raul, is expected to take his place, but no one knows for sure. If you ask me, changing from Fidel to Raul would be the same as Saddam Hussein stepping down back in 2003 and having Uday or Qusay, his sadistic offspring, take control...or having Bill Clinton step down and having his wife take his place. There really is no difference in the end.

With the Castros still in control, Cuba will more than likely remain a police state. Political opponents of the regime will probably remain locked away in prisons that make Guantanamo Bay look a tropical island paradise.

There's always a chance for change though. If the people of Cuba are truly seeking freedom, a lot of pressure will be put on the new government to go ahead with democratic reform. Thus, the country could be heading towards a crossroads--will the people allow for a continuation of an autocratic regime, or will they demand freedom?